[Koha] Barcode info needed

[Bigwood, David]

George,

The library standard is Codabar. The bar code is structured with the 1st
digit being a 3 for books, a 2 for patrons. The next 4 numbers are the
institution code. Once an agency tracked them, but now just pick any 4
numbers. The remaining are the item number. The last digit can be a check
digit. Not sure if Koha can calculate checksums.

Material  Institution  Item #    Check digit
3         1111       00012345   9

BarCode-1 is the place to go to find out about bar codes. Standards, news, a
bulletin board, shareware, and links are available. There are no products
for sale, only unbiased information.
http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/barcode1.html


Sincerely,
David Bigwood
bigwood at lpi.usra.edu
Lunar & Planetary Institute
Cataloging news: http://www.catalogablog.blogger.com


-----Original Message-----
From: George Jenner [mailto:georgejenner at belgacom.net]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 4:13 PM
To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: [Koha] Barcode info needed


Hello

I've helped set up a library for our primary school over the past 8 
months or so.  Koha was a possible candidate for our computer system but 
I couldn't get it going in time.  But it's probable that we will change 
systems next year, and I will propose Koha again.

Why I'm writing is that we are about to reshelve all the books, and I 
want to use the opportunity to put barcodes on them.  I think we've got 
a volunteer to print them all using kbarcode (found the reference here) 
but our ignorance of barcodes themselves is still profound.

What I want to do is print barcodes that will be accepted by any library 
software, so I need a specification.  I see things like EAN 12, UPC, 3 
of 9 (not 7 of 9?).  I don't want to know what they mean, I just want 
someone to say  "use a 13 digit number, EAN 12 coding, don't use letters 
and everything will be all right".  Is such a specification possible? 
Or do I have to know what they mean.  ( If so I'll just buy the barcodes 
from Junior Librarian, which is the system the headmistress wants - but 
I want to spend the money on books)

Our books are numbered from 1 to 6500 and I intend to use those numbers 
as barcode numbers.

Many thanks for any advice
George Jenner

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